It is not easy to turn a book into a bestseller. It is particularly hard to make a book by a relatively new author in the industry reach the heights of books written by seasoned authors. However, even if a book does become a bestseller, it can be a good seller.
Traditionally published authors who are used to relying on their publishers' distribution networks think that there is not much an author can do when it comes to marketing his books. However, this is far from the truth. Indie authors have been successfully publishing and marketing their own books for many years.
One thing that authors know is that the best connections they can make do not involve their agents, editors, or publishers. Their most important connections are their readers. The following are some ways authors can use to market their own books while keeping their readers engaged.
Using book blogs: Authors who successfully market their books create blogs specifically for their books. They fill these blogs with interesting content about their books, including exclusive excerpts from their books before they are officially launched. These techniques bring readers to their sites and also help them to increase sales by building suspense before a book launch.
Email marketing: Traditionally, email marketing involved a person buying an email list from a third party source and sending mass emails with the hope that some of the emails will be converted into sales. However, email lists from third parties are not very responsive. Authors create their own email lists from their websites and blogs for their books. Emails collected this way are more likely to result into sales.
Giveaways: People love free things and readers are no exceptions. An author can market his book by offering free copies of their books when certain conditions are met. For instance, an author can give one extra book for every person who buys their book. They can also offer a free book for every tenth person to subscribe to newsletters on the book website. These are great ways to make people know about your book and to reward them in the process.
Promotional events: Many people would agree that traditional book events are almost in the past. However, people still haven’t got enough of book launches and they probably won’t in the near future. Creative authors still know how to attract people to their book launches. For instance, instead of inviting people for book readings, authors can organize events at places such as restaurants or clubs to make their readers have other reasons to attend apart from buying autographed copies of books.
Wattpad: As mentioned before, people can’t get enough of free things. When it comes to books, a great number of people want to know what they are buying before committing their money. One way for an author to give people a taste of his book is to give readers some of the chapters for free on Wattpad. Readers who like the chapters are more likely to buy the full book. This method of promotion also gets people talking. The word-of-mouth recommendations are also likely to bring in more sales.
